Damaged
by DySolo
Summary: ELLE DB Series. Number 1. Elle profiles the group. No spoilers.


**Title: Damaged**  
**Series Information: 1 in Elle's section of Deal Breaker**  
**Pairing: hints of future elle/reid, maybe elle/morgan  
Author's Notes: I had so much fun writing this. Illegal amounts of fun...again. Oh, and this is supposed to not be all accurate. It's Elle's opinion without knowing anything and the Morgan thing? I have ALWAYS thought that way. His playa-playa act is such a front.  
Rating: T.  
Summary: Elle profiles the group.**

* * *

It's only the third day on the job when she realizes something about the group. Each and everyone is damaged. It's the only way they could do this job. Broken down at a young age that made them want to save the day. Only the ones who understand the pain would do this job.

Now she's not an expert profiler or anything yet and she'll probably never be like Gideon or Hotch, or Hell even the whiz-kid brainiac that knows way too much to be so young, but she can guess at their problems.

She can tell by the way Morgan flirts with her that he's had some sexualized trauma as a kid. An uncle or a neighborhood friend did something to him and he tries to prove his masculinity everyday. He tries too hard though and she catches him watching Reid a few times when he thinks no one's looking. The thought of the two makes her giggle, but she never makes a comment. For all she knows, she could be completely wrong and then the bridge would be burned; he'd never forgive her for making a comment, whether it was right or not. And she's not willing to chance it. Morgan's the closest person she's got to a friend yet and she needs that. Plus, hey, he was good to look at either way, so it didn't matter her which way he swung. And if he wanted to prove to her how much of a man he was, she'd let him. She smirks, although she still imagines he wants to show Reid the most.

Not that she thinks Reid goes that anyways. She bets a lot of men wish he did though. He's attractive in that lanky and awkward way. He tries to hide it, keep people away with his abundance of knowledge and bad clothes, but she knows that there's a 24 year old male inside of him, his eyes tend to look up a little from his file as she or JJ passes him on the plane. He idolizes Gideon, so she assumes his father wasn't around and his mother was an academic, probably too focused with her works to pay attention to her son, so he followed her footsteps, learning to impress and probably never being able to. He's got 3 PhDs, two in subjects she barely passed in high school and one she doesn't have a clue about. He's impressive and if she's being honest with herself, he's cute. She could teach him a thing or two, if he'd let her.

She chews on her pencil as JJ makes her way through the bullpen. She doesn't know why JJ does this job, but she'll play with it in her head. She was a media liaison, not an actual profiler. Close to fighting the crime without being actually in it, maybe she witnessed something, experienced something not as a victim, but a family member of the victim. Something that happened to an older or younger sibling that stole all the attention away from the blonde, so that's why she's on the screen, fighting crime now. A blatant outcry to get her mother or father's attention away from the sibling that stole her childhood away.

Gideon steps out of his office, calling to Spencer. He's as dependent on the boy as the boy is to him. She figures he lost a son, who'd probably be Spencer's age now. Gideon was old enough to have a son in his twenties, wasn't he? Gideon was very passionate about everyone of his cases, always needing to find the killer - there had to be a reason for that. Maybe his son's killer had gone free and Gideon felt guilty, trying to save everyone else from the experience that haunts a man who loses a child and has no answers.

A child, that leads to Hotch who is about to be a father. He's terrified about it, but she knows he tries to hide that. He tries to hide all his feelings, needing to be in control. But why? Because he understands what the loss of control he leads to. He spent his childhood not being able to gain his control back. Abuse? She assumes so, probably by his father. The same-sex parent has such a profound effect of a child. His fathers abuse would have shaped him into who Hotch became. Maybe that's why he goes by Hotch, too, instead of his full last name. Hotchner is his father, the abusive angry man, where Hotch can be whoever he decides to be and comes out as a cold bitter man. If she's honest, Hotch kind of scares her. He has a tendency to stare at them like he just knows what they are thinking. It's creepy.

Who's left? Garcia. The bubbly slightly obnoxious because she's so happy tech. Morgan's best friend, which would make sense that his best friend would be a woman like Garcia if he was actually gay, but she's regressing. Garcia's almost too chipper, as if she's hiding something, but Elle doesn't even have a guess at what. She has only seen Garcia a couple of times yet. She's still a mystery and maybe that's the reason Garcia has all her bright clothes and zinging punch-lines, to hide behind. No one ever really delves deeper into her because everyone desperately needs the happiness that she provides. She's like a warm home in a freezing storm. One is just grateful to be inside, away from the things that chill, to check for things that might be wrong.

And where does that leave her, with herself, she assumes. Ahh, she's got to be the most fucked up of them all, she thinks to herself. Lost her father to the job, a police officer at that, and her mother to alcohol. Unable to save either. She craves the attention of men, hoping one will replace the father's love she lost too soon, and unable to really connect with women, because she trusts that they will let her down. She drinks too much for someone who lost someone to "the disease." And now, here she is, up in the BAU, trying to profile everyone else, trying to find their dirty secrets because she's sick and tired of dealing with her own.

She smirks, remembering the first thing Morgan told her. They weren't supposed to profile each other. Eh. She was never one to really follow the rules anyways, she got that from her mother…. And maybe a bit from her father too. It didn't matter, she could tell by the way everyone looked at each other. They knew that everyone in this unit was just as damaged as they were, maybe they didn't delve into how or why like she had, but they knew. And knowing made it easier to grow together. They needed each other to keep standing, to know that there was someone out there that understood.


End file.
